Sir Clive Woodward is a genius. Sir Clive Woodward is a hero. Sir Clive Woodward and fellow visionary Rupert Lowe will turn Southampton into European champions.

Saints fans better believe it. Because if Lowe is ousted as chairman at tonight's club AGM - as some supporters still smarting from relegation hope - then Woodward may take his unique powers elsewhere. And become a great football manager there instead.

Woodward's decision to quit rugby for football - and Lowe's bold decision to hire him - should have been celebrated by football fans like scientologists celebrated the conversions of Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Football is his spiritual home (when he was 15 he was a promising player about to be watched by Everton when his disapproving dad banished him to a rugby-only boarding school, embittering their relationship forever) and he has returned to the fold bearing something even better than pots of cash: a wealth of knowledge. "Yes, a knowledge of rugby," you may snort, as so many others have done, but no: knowledge of how to destroy barriers, inspire people and, ultimately, of how to be successful.

When he took over as England manager in 1997, the country was ranked sixth in the world - the same position they occupied when Woodward was a player 15 years previously. They were stagnant. The RFU had no fresh ideas and players' ability was being wasted through ignorance and inattention. A study conducted by Loughborough University classed rugby players as only the 15th fittest sportsmen in the country - behind archers.

Only an iron-willed innovator could have transformed England into the fittest and best team in the planet within six years. The same iron-willed innovator who had previously brought Henley from regional oblivion into the national leagues - winning a cup almost every season to compliment promotion, and who also brought London Irish back form the brink. And who, since all this had been achieved while rugby was still amateur, also abandoned a cushy bank job to be a carpet-fitter, before becoming one of the most successful salesman Xerox has ever employed and then setting up his own business in his garage and turning it into a multi-million pound multinational company.

All these improbable feats were achieved using the approach that will bring him glory in football. Tireless work, forensic attention to detail, a commitment to creative thinking and (are you listening, naysayers) an eagerness to learn from other disciplines. The notion that someone who succeeds in one sport cannot succeed in another should seem especially ludicrous to Southampton fans. One of the country's top racehorse trainers is Mick Channon, a former Saint and England captain.

It's certainly not a notion that Woodward has ever indulged. As England rugby manager, he hired gymnasts to improve players' flexibility and darts players to tutor line-out throwers; he was among the pioneers of ProZone and the first to use cricket slip-catching machines to sharpen players' reactions, something that is now commonplace. He travelled to Denver to pick up defensive tips from the Broncos' NFL outfit, got bonding advice from the Royal Marines and even borrowed many of his attitude-enhancing techniques from a successful Australian dentist.

He identifies all the components needed to make an athlete excel, and then engages the best person available to refine each of those components. At Southampton, he has already called in Dr Sherylle Calder, the 'vision expert' who works on strengthening players' eye muscles and improving their peripheral vision. As Woodward says, "the eye is the most important muscle in the body. There's a famous quote from Muhammad Ali: 'you can't hit what you can't see'."

Harry Redknapp scoffed loudly when he heard about it: but Jonny Wilkinson swears by Calder's methods.

He has also brought in Simon Clifford, the former primary school teacher who left that trade to set up Brazilian soccer schools all over the world. Through his friendship with former Middlesbrough player Juninho, Clifford came to realise that Brazilians are generally more skilful than others not because they are born with lavish talent, but because they work intensively at developing those skills. Woodward himself has travelled to Brazil to see how young Ronaldos and Ronaldinhos literally spend hours practising their tricks and cultivating their relationship with the ball. Clifford's role is to encourage young Southampton players to do likewise. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

That's one thing virtually every rugby player who worked under Woodward agreed on: training was inventive and challenging. It was enjoyable because it made you a better player.

To claim that salt-of-earth, working class English footballers won't take to Woodward because he's a posh rugby impostor is to patronise the players. Arsenal players recognised Arsène Wenger's wisdom, Liverpool players listened to Gérard Houllier, and Jose Mourinho is idolised at Chelsea. If 'working class' English footballers will listen to a Portuguese translator, an economics graduate and a teacher from France, then a sports specialist from England shouldn't prove too much of a cultural stretch. (And how may English players are there in English clubs these days, anyway?)

Woodward has vowed to try and improve every aspect of players' games, even saying he'll produce penalty-takers so accurate they'll score 100 times out of 100 - firing home off the inside of the post 99 of those times. He reckons it's just a case of identifying the right kicking action and then practising, practising, practising, until it becomes a mechanical instinct. He's always liked making grandiose claims, but there can be no denying this one makes sense. Tiger Woods may be the greatest golfer the world has ever seen, but he still spends hours every day practicing three-foot putts.

"Without being over-dramatic, I'm trying to create the perfect footballer," Woodward said last week with Mourinho-esque ambition. And ambition is the key word. It's not arrogance. He didn't barge into football saying he knew it all: no, this man won the rugby World Cup and then went back to school, enrolling in Uefa coaching courses that will take three years to complete. That takes immense humility. It also reflects meticulousness and intelligence.

One of the reasons Woodward left the RFU was because they wouldn't give him the resources he felt he needed to perpetuate England's rugby supremacy. The FA tried to persuade him to throw his lot in with them and build the foundation for an English World Cup win in football too. But then Mark Palios, the prime mover behind the idea, got himself entwined in a sexual soap opera and had to leave Soho Square. So Lowe, one of the FA's biggest critics as it happens, seized the opportunity to harness Woodward's talents and has promised to give him the time and resources to create a great club.

When given time and room to manoeuvre, Woodward has always succeeded: the biggest flop in his career came when he was asked to patch together players from four different countries for a two-month tour of the most inhospitable rugby territory on the planet. Sure, he made mistakes, as innovators always do, and what makes a tour so unforgiving is that you don't get the time to apply the lessons learned from those mistakes. A long-term role in a club is the ideal environment for Woodward to thrive.

Lowe himself is an innovator. After delivering a spanking new stadium to Southampton, he has been brave enough to entrust the management of the first team to a young coach (Steve Wigley) and then to someone who was a success in the lower divisions and perhaps ready for a crack at the big time (Paul Sturrock). He soon realised these ventures weren't going to succeed, so stopped them and reverted to footballing tradition: appointing a journeyman manager who's popular in the media. Harry Redknapp steered the Saints to relegation.

Now Lowe has innovated again, hiring one of the greatest team-builders in sporting history. "Look what Jose Mourinho did at Porto," gushed Woodward last week. "They won the Champions League. I can't believe Porto is any bigger than Southampton."